Wednesday, April 23, 2008

I love salty sweet things. One of my favorite sweets is dark chocolate, really don't waste my time with wimpy milk chocolates. One of my favorite salties is bacon, truly a food of the gods. I had my first taste of the two together is a Vosges Mo's Bacon Bar which I frustratingly enough haven't been able to find since moving to Minneapolis. So, I decided why not blend those two things together myself into a cupcake. I had run out of the Dutch Processed Cocoa I have been using & decided to try Hershey's Special Dark Cocoa which is a Dutch Processed blend. I was afraid it wouldn't have the flavor I was looking for but I was wrong. This cocoa gives a wonderful dark color & just the dark chocolate flavor I was looking for. Plus its about half the price & I can get it at Target. Don't skimp on the bacon in this recipe because these cupcakes are best when you get a nice chunk of bacon in each bite. I sprinkle each cupcake with a little Fleur de Sel before serving for just that extra touch of saltiness.

Preheat oven to 350 F. Prepare 24 muffin tins.Chop bacon into about 1/2-inch pieces. Cook over med-high heat in a skillet until bacon is brown & crisp. Remove bacon with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain. Pat any remaining oil off the bacon. Set aside.Melt butter in a large heavy saucepan over moderately low heat, then whisk in cocoa. Add water and whisk until smooth. Remove from heat. Whisk in separately sugar, eggs, buttermilk, and vanilla. Sift flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt into the cocoa mixture and whisk until just combined (it will be a little bit lumpy). Stir in bacon.Fill muffin tins to about 2/3 full. Bake for 20 minutes until a skewer or toothpick comes out clean. It's a moist cake, so don't worry if a few crumbs stick to your tester.Allow cupcakes to cool.

51 comments:

I don't have any pictures of the inside & because the bacon is fried pretty dark it doesn't really show up in the cupcake to look at. It is just slightly bacon-y, I mean you do get a bacon taste when you get a chunk of bacon but its more about the saltiness.

i love savoury muffins but have never heard of savoury cupcakes! i love the frosting..it's so black and dark i love it! somehow it makes me think of it as a very morbid and individualistic cupcake. :Dgreat picture...i'm not gonna just make this for halloween, however, because i love dark chocolate too! mmmm. x

Yes! Beautiful cupcakes, You can find Vosges Bars (particularly the Bacon ones) at Whole Foods, Kitchen Window in Calhoun Square, and Patina. And thats just in Uptown! Kind of glad you hadn't found them yet or else your ingenuity wouldn't have blessed the web with it's first(probably) Bacon Cupcake.

My dad was just telling me how weird my mom & I are for liking the salty/sweet thing. He doesn't believe that there are other people out there that combine the two. I'm going to make these & not tell him about the ingredients, until after he eats one!

Oh my gosh~ I can't believe you recreated that chocolate bar. It seems to be everywhere on the itnernetz these days. But I think you are the first recipe I've seen to recreate. Love me some cupcakes- very creative and very cool. So Glad I saw you on the Leftover Queen forums!

i was linked to your site by yumsugar and in awe at the idea and apparent success of your bacon dark chocolate cupcake. i will definitely test this on my guy friends and try to keep the secret ingredient a secret until they bite into it.

this sounds like a course an iron chef would pump out of iron stadium.

I made these yesterday for a hockey-watching party, and they disappeared rapidly. The icing alone is fantastic, and the salty bits of bacon balance the richness of the cupcake. The only problem I had was wanting to eat the bacon before it went into the batter.

The chocolates you mention (Vosges Mo's Bacon Bar) are made in Chicago. I am surprised you have not been able to find it, but then again it is a rare chocolate. There is a company in California that sells the product. You may be able to call them and find out what stores they sell the Chocolate bar too. The companies name is Cheeseworks and thier number is 510-769-1150. Good Luck in finding the chocolate bar near you.

I am getting ready to make these this afternoon and wondered if you could clarify in the recipe what if the little "t" is a teaspoon and the big "T" is a tablespoon. Will let you know how they turn out! Can't wait!! Thanks. Micheal

Cooked them for Christmas with me and my "everything is better with bacon (and cheese)" friends. Of course I also doubled the bacon...and skimped by buying dark chocolate frosting instead of making that from scratch also, but...

An absolute hit! So tasty - with the salt on top it's an absolute perfect mix.

Now I'm thinking:

1) I should make some for work and not tell people what's in them until they try it.

2) I should try a batch with cheese somehow.

3) I'm sure someone has done something similar to this, but I'm tempted to experiment with bacon, scrambled eggs and cheddar and baking them with either yellow cake or maybe even krustee's pancake mix and topping fresh with maple sugar and cinnamon for a truly breakfast version. What do you think?

Anyway, thank you for the wonderful recipe and for spurring the desire to experiment even further! (Which, knowing me, might turn out terrible ;^p )

I just made a batch of these cupcakes. My fiance and I split one while it was still warm and gooey. They are excellent!So moist and tasty. I used edible silver leaf to decorate the tops - it really goes well with the foil wrappers.

I tried these at the weekend (who can see this recipe and not give it a go??) for friends and family, but unlike the other comments we all felt the bacon was completely unnecessary.

The cake itself is fantastic - really dark and chocolaty and so moist. The thing was that the bacon really just seemed like it was in there for the sake of it. It wasn't offensive in any way, and yes it does add a salty hit (which I thought was covered by the salt sprinkled on top), but as my OH pointed out, it just seemed like I'd accidentally tipped the brekkie leftovers into the mixture:)

The frosting was nice but too sweet for me (I'm in the UK so maybe we have it a bit less sugary?), so I added some cream cheese (to keep with the bacon theme obviously:)) which took the edge off nicely for me.

I'll definitely do them again, but minus the bacon. I might add a liquid salted caramel centre to compensate as that would add the sweet/salty hit you get from the bacon.